With smartphones becoming ubiquitous and one study showing 55 percent of smartphone owners prefer voice commands for in-car smartphone integration, the business case for something like Entune is compelling. Toyota is coming to the connectivity party a bit late, following Kia and others, but hopes to make up for lost time by packing Entune with features.

Entune runs on a proprietary operating system that connects with a driver’s mobile phone to access Toyota’s app store, stream audio, provide safety and telematics data and download software updates.

At this point, the mobile apps include Microsoft’s Bing search engine and Clear Channel’s IHeartRadio music-streaming service, plus Pandora, Movietickets.com and OpenTable. Other apps may follow, but only after being vetted by Toyota to ensure they don’t encourage driver distraction.

“We’re not at a place where it’s a completely open platform, but it’s not completely closed either,” said Jon Bucci, vice president of Toyota’s Advanced Technology Department. “We first want to make sure that the applications we develop are exactly what our customers are asking for, and parallel with that, making sure they can be delivered appropriately in a vehicle.”

Bucci hailed Entune’s voice-recognition software, which was developed by Voice Box Technologies, for its simplicity and precision. Voice recognition has been hit or miss with some infotainment systems.

“During a Bing search, where you’re searching for a location while driving, it will go offboard and use Voice Box conversational voice-recognition software to allow easier operation of the search, as opposed to having to memorize robotic commands,” he said. “You can talk naturally. The voicebox technology is able to understand utterances like ‘um’ or ‘uh.'”

The system doesn’t require the latest smartphone to run, nor will it become obsolete every model year. Cars equipped with Entune will also feature satellite and HD radio receivers.

“There’s a mismatch between the cycle time and development of the car and for a consumer electronics device, and that’s been perplexing us in the automotive industry,” Bucci said. Now, with wireless updates to Entune that work just like a software update on any other platform, even an older Toyota’s system can get an upgrade. “We can push that to the customer wirelessly without having to get software reflashed at the dealer,” he said.

Further adding to the system’s practicality, Entune delivers traffic and weather info along with gas prices. And of course it integrates with the car’s navi system, allowing you to set addresses found with Bing, for example, as your current destination.

The system will be available on “select vehicles in calendar year ’11,” said Bucci, and the Entune app will soon be available for download at Toyota.com in addition to iTunes for the iPhone, Android Market and Blackberry App World.